A Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for Strategic Planning at the Swiss Forest Enterprise Level: Coping With Climate Change and Shifting Demands in Ecosystem Service Provisioning

Timothy Thrippleton,Esther Thürig,Leo Gallus Bont,Reinhard Mey,Jürgen Zell,Janine Schweier,Clemens Blattert

doi:10.3389/ffgc.2021.693020

Abstract

Sustainable forest management plays a key role for forest biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services (BES), including the important service of carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. Forest managers, however, find themselves in the increasingly complex planning situation to balance the often conflicting demands in BES. To cope with this situation, a prototype of a decision support system (DSS) for strategic (long-term) planning at the forest enterprise level was developed in the present project. The DSS was applied at three case study enterprises (CSEs) in Northern Switzerland, two lowland and one higher-elevation enterprise, for a 50-year time horizon (2010 to 2060) under present climate and three climate change scenarios (‘wet’, ‘medium’, ‘dry’). BES provisioning (for biodiversity, timber production, recreation, protection against gravitational hazards and carbon sequestration) was evaluated for four management scenarios (no management, current (BAU), lower and higher management intensity) using a utility-based multi-criteria decision analysis. Additionally, four alternative preference scenarios for BES provisioning were investigated to evaluate the robustness of the results to shifting BES preferences. At all CSEs, synergies between carbon sequestration, biodiversity and protection function as well as trade-offs between carbon sequestration and timber production occurred. The BAU management resulted in the highest overall utility in 2060 for different climate and BES preference scenarios, with the exception of one lowland CSE under current BES preference, where a lower intensity management performed best. Although climate change had a relatively small effect on overall utility, individual BES indicators showed a negative climate change impact for the lowland CSEs and a positive effect for the higher elevation CSE. The patterns of overall utility were relatively stable to shifts in BES preferences, with exception of a shift toward a preference for carbon sequestration. Overall, the study demonstrates the potential of the DSS to investigate the development of multiple BES as well as their synergies and trade-offs for a set of lowland and mountainous forest enterprises. The new system incorporates a wide set of BES indicators, a strong empirical foundation and a flexible multi-criteria decision analysis, enabling stakeholders to take scientifically well-founded decisions under changing climatic conditions and political goals.

Highlights

Forest ecosystems play a key role for biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) provisioning (UNCCC 2015; United Nation CBD 2020)
Under present climate conditions, changing management intensities affected the development of all BES from 2010 to 2060, with strongest effects occurring for the BES carbon sequestration and timber production (Figure 3)
When comparing partial utilities of BES with each other, a consistent positive relationship between biodiversity and protection, biodiversity and recreation as well as between recreation and protection was found across all case study enterprises (CSEs), indicating a synergy among these ecosystem services (Figure 4 and Supplementary Appendix Figure 2.1)

Summary

Introduction

Forest ecosystems play a key role for biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) provisioning (UNCCC 2015; United Nation CBD 2020). Many forests offer protection functions, e.g., in mountainous areas where forests play a key role in protecting settlements and infrastructure against gravitational hazards, such as rockfall, avalanches and landslides (Frehner et al, 2005) Since these diverse demands in BES are often at conflict with each other (e.g., Mina et al, 2017), forest managers have to cope with significant trade-offs in planning (e.g., Langner et al, 2017; Blattert et al, 2018; Bont et al, 2019). Further complexity is added to the planning situation by the impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems, which will likely induce profound shifts in forest BES provisioning (Mina et al, 2017; Seidl et al, 2019) In this increasingly complex and diverse planning situation, sciencebased decision support is key for planning the sustainable management of multifunctional forests (Kangas et al, 2015)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion